tender reverie: mending of the heart

JM Art Management is thrilled to invite you to the opening night of tender reverie: mending of the heart.

Nestled within the walls of downtown Los Angeles’s art district, tender reverie: mending of the heart is an exhibition that reconsiders the dialogue between fantasy and reality, not as opposing truths but as an ongoing collaboration constructed through intimate exchanges and tender disagreements. This uniquely local exhibition brings together a multigenerational group of artists with divergent practices (Susan Aparicio, Andrea Aragon, Cami Árboles, mika Castañeda, Cash-Cooper, Loren Leblanc, Judie Adaobi, Richard nam, Harper Paradowski, Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III, Michon Sanders, Lainey Racah), with the addition of two guest creators-- John Paul Fauves and Rob Woodcox. The show is co-curated by USC Roski alumnus, Kevy (Haiyang) Yang, and Julia Mozheyko of JM Art Management.

"I have painted since I can remember. It's truly like therapy to me. It's almost a necessity to bring a balance to my soul," reflects Fauves, whose portraits resemble vibrant polaroids that have mutated under the exposure of extraterrestrial lighting —each canvas inviting you to revisit the oddly familiar faces that have shaped your dreams. Woodcox, whose photographs strive to straddle the fragments of lived fantasies, echoes Fauves' sentiment in his visually arresting works that break free from the binary of imagination and reality.

tender reverie explores how fantasies are constructed, broken down, and reclaimed within the matrix of realities. By investigating the poetics of gentle discord and fleeting closeness, all in the name of excavating the tension-ridden terrain of contested legacies and diasporas. The show's featured artists embrace novel approaches to assemblage, painting, performance, photography, and sculpture while revealing the central thesis that restoration and reunion are always possible as long as we hold our tongues and bow our hearts before entering the unknown.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS: 

Susan Aparicio is a visual artist based in Los Angeles working in video, stained glass, and installation. Her work explores the liminal space between science and religion while kickstarting conversations surrounding the purpose of collective memory and the fantasy nature of afterlives. Aparicio earned dual BA degrees in Studio Art and Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia and completed an MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles in Art. Her work has been exhibited at LaPau Gallery, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Charlie James Gallery, The Mistake Room. Additionally, her video works have been screened at the Official Latino Film and Arts Festival, among others.

Andrea Aragon grew up in Montebello and East L.A. She is an artist specializing in oil paintings that candidly explore the human experience. Her work, often rooted in her own community and encounters, examines themes of ephemeral moments and human interaction. With a keen eye for pigment quality and an evolving selective approach to tools and techniques, Aragon's works challenge the viewer to confront often overlooked moments, using empathy as a subject to bridge divides and highlight counter-narratives. Aragon's works have been exhibited at Dream Child Gallery, Franchise Gallery, John Doe Gallery, and Tlaloc Studios.

Cami Árboles is a bi-coastal (L.A. and New York) performance and visual artist. She specializes in pole dancing and uses her practice as a medium to explore fluidity in movement and identity. Educated at Yale University in a pre-med and music track, Árboles pivoted her focus towards creating a virtual and physical space for inclusive dance and body-positive activism. Through her platform, the Mind Body Spirit Collective, Árboles merges pole dancing with other movement-based disciplines to challenge and subvert cultural norms surrounding the body and gender. Emphasizing the art form's inherent tenderness, her work serves as a personal and collective liberation, offering an alternative narrative to mainstream dialogues surrounding bodily aesthetics and the joy of having an active fantasy life.

mika Castañeda is an interdisciplinary creator, educator, and collaborator from Woodland Hills, California. Placing itself between object and archive, their practice looks towards over-sentimentalized concepts surrounding the stage, collecting, and assembly in order to enact narratives of queer hope, holding, and remembering. It concerns itself and themself with one's proximity to others and asks simply, "How/when do I feel held, how/when can I hold?". "Who gets to remember, and how do we?". With these questions as their first point of departure, their work fishes out an understanding of these questions through formal studies as sites for mutual witness, heldness, and proximity. Ultimately, what is formed is a practice that holds tightly to notions of the then/thereof queerness, embracing new formations of 'place' and 'archive.' An approach, by definition, lends itself to what a space must give to become a place of community, a place of affirmation, and a place for the human capacity of transcendence.

Cash-Cooper is an L.A. artist devoted to furthering the shared history of humanity, primarily through large-scale paintings. His work, informed by grand narratives of spirituality and anchored in the broad, inclusive practice of "worship," simultaneously borrows techniques and approaches from Silver Age (1970s) comic books, anime, and oil paintings from the Northern European Renaissance. The characters Cash-Cooper introduces en masse, stylized in ink and gouache, operate within an immanent, transcendent universe. There, bodies and beings, weapons and wild unknowns coexist towards an unforeseeable end; the only certainty is struggle, transformation, movement, and journeying. Cash-Cooper has a BFA in Animation from the California Institute of the Arts. His fellowships include The Princeton in Asia fellowship at Dalian University in China and a teaching fellowship at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore. Solo exhibitions feature his first solo show, Unseen Forces, at Junmei Art Gallery in Dalian, China, and a series of Worship Grounds exhibitions in Los Angeles. The California Institute of the Arts commissioned Black Magic, Blessed Children, for their permanent collection.

John Paul Fauves is a contemporary Artist from Costa Rica . His artistic journey started at a very young age after he became a student of Joaquin Rodriguez del Paso, one of the most important Costa Rican modern art tutors. Fauves spent 15 years studying and mastering his technique, and only a few years ago he finally started showcasing his work. In his paintings he engages questions of identity as they relate to art history as well as our everyday interactions with mainstream culture and social media. Greatly inspired by modernist masters as well as pop-artists, Fauves mixes fragments of different iconic images in vivid and colorful compositions. Of his experimental and high eclectic style, he says, “art is an expression from the soul, and the soul is something limitless. This is why I am always searching for different elements to bring into the work.”

Loren Leblanc is a sculptor and a 3D artist based in Inglewood, California. His practice focuses on bridging the traditional with elements of futurism. Leblanc maintains that Afro-futurism isn't always cinematic but rather raw and unfiltered at its core. He has been creating sculptural pieces with 3D pen material, adding a new dimension to his existing oil-based clay practice.

Judie Adaobi Mozie is a Nigerian visual artist and creative director living in Los Angeles, California. Her practice combines acrylic painting with sculptural work, underpinned by concepts of dream walking and Afro-futurism. Committed to reshaping the narratives surrounding African identity, Adaobi seeks to manifest her truth as vividly and audaciously as possible through her art. She actively dismantles monolithic views of African identity, urging an embrace of originality and a celebration of diverse facets of selfhood. Adaobi aims to dispel fears surrounding individuality and encourages Africans to engage more deeply with the complexity of their own identities.

Richard Nam was born and raised in Los Angeles. He received his BA in Art and Art History from UCLA and his MFA from CalArts. Nam is a multimedia artist who primarily works in ceramics, drawing, painting, and printmaking. His artwork examines the human condition in relation to its urban/ ecological environments. He enjoys creating work about cows, cats, and dinosaurs; Nam believes our innate affinity toward creatures and monstrosities reflects our craving for freedom. His practice reminds us to water our inner child constantly so that we can pursue our most authentic journey.

Harper Paradowski was born in Los Angeles and a muralist as well as a ceramic artist. While growing up he was drawn to the numerous public art across the city and began creating large scale stretched paintings based on the visuals that he had encountered. Through his ceramic practice he has been exploring sculptural and handheld forms, drawing inspiration from the alter ego of Rock Chick, a character that is known for their wild and savage appearance, but maintains a gentle appreciation for the beauty of life.

Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in West Los Angeles. Relying heavily on self-reflexivity, his work investigates the multilayered experiences of varying Brown social realities in Los Angeles spanning the past, present, and future. This includes looking at the structural nature of oppositional value systems, intelligences, subjectivities, and where they become validated. Sánchez attained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California, a Performance Studies Graduate Certificate, and a Post-MFA Teaching Fellowship. He received his undergraduate degree from Otis College of Art and Design, where he double-minored in arts education and community engagement, and an Associate degree from Santa Monica Community College in Liberal Arts: Social and Behavioral Sciences. Sánchez has exhibited and performed in a variety of spaces, including LA Freewaves, the Mistake Room, the Landing Gallery, CurateLA's digital platform, Redcat Disney/CalArts Theater, USC Mateo Studios, Human Resources Gallery, 18th Street Art Center, UTA Artist Space, Plaza de la Raza, and more. He is also a tenure-track assistant professor at Occidental College in the Art & Art History department.

Michon Sanders is a West Coast-based artist raised in the South — an upbringing that has profoundly influenced her art-making. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2020 and completed her MFA candidacy at the University of Southern California in 2023. She won the 2020 AXA Art Prize, juried by Julia Chiang, Erik Parker, Laurie Simmons, and Salman Toor, and was featured in T Magazine, the Arts & Culture magazine of the New York Times. Her work was included in the 2021 ForFreedoms initiative Hear Her Here. Her San Francisco solo debut, i don't do this for just anybody, opened in 2022 with Friends Indeed Gallery. Her Los Angeles solo debut, Let's keep this between us, opened in 2022 with Giovanni's Room. Her MFA Thesis Exhibition, All I Have To Do Is Stay Black And Die, opened in April 2023.

Lainey Racah is a multidisciplinary artist and poet working in painting, installation and video projection, informed by studies in poetry and performance and a deep interest in material process and its relationship to the body. Her work explores themes of environmentalism, fluidity, and strategies of visibility and collectivity through engaging with queer genealogies. Performance and process – stains from fluid movement, material traces left from bodily action and the passage of time – form and shape the work. Her interest in holes, cuts and fragments are conceptual, processual, and material markers in her research and practice. This interest represents her concern for the interstitial, the byproduct, the contradiction; thinking about what it means to make work through a queer lens and body, prioritizing fluidity and imagining the alternative, and engaging with legacies of queer art and writing. Racah holds a B.A. in Art with a minor in English from UCLA, where she received the Emma B. Keller Fine Arts Scholarship, and an MFA from the USC Roski School of Art with a Performance Studies Certificate.

Rob Woodcox is a fine art photographer and film director currently living between Mexico and the US. As he creates each artwork, Rob strives to capture fragments of a vivid life sewn by the threads of reality, memory and dream. Each concept is a declaration of his experience and seeks to tell a meaningful story to each individual that views it. Rob's passion for photography has developed into a dedication to advocacy; he has produced projects raising consciousness and conversation around the US foster system and adoption, queer identity, body neutrality, racial equality and environmental justice. Having been adopted as a child and interacting often with the foster care system, Rob creates from a unique perspective, finding hope in human connection and the will to overcome negative constructs within our complex societies.

tender reverie: mending of the heart co-curated by Kevy (Haiyang) Yang and JM Art Management Oct 12th - 26th @ 1000 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, US Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 11-6 PM or by appointment.